Dai receives $200,000 grant from Alzheimer’s Association
Yifan Dai is investigating the electrochemistry of neurotoxic protein assemblies
Yifan Dai, assistant professor of biomedical engineering in the McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis, has received a three-year, $200,000 grant from the Alzheimer’s Association to support his research investigating the electrochemistry of neurotoxic protein assemblies.
Dai’s work aims to shed light on the way two seemingly unrelated processes — the development of chemical toxicity and the formation of neurotoxic protein assemblies — couple together through transition-state-dependent, interfacial electrochemical properties to lead to the onset of neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease.
His lab is studying neurotoxic proteins that can form distinct physical forms of assemblies through phase transition, such as Aβ peptides and α-synuclein. The research will apply a newly discovered non-enzymatic, interface-dependent physical chemistry framework to understand the relationship between protein assemblies and neuronal chemical toxicity. Specifically, it will investigate whether and how the phase transition process or the development of higher-order physical structures can encode inherent electrochemical functions.
Understanding the fundamental electrochemical principles of protein assemblies will ultimately help establish a new framework to explain the progression and identify novel therapeutic targets for Alzheimer’s disease, Dai said.
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